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Slut Shaming in Adolescence: a Violence Against Girls and Its Impact on Their Health

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Slut Shaming in Adolescence: a Violence Against Girls and Its Impact on Their Health International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Article Slut Shaming in Adolescence: A Violence against Girls and Its Impact on Their Health Margot Goblet * and Fabienne Glowacz Department of Psychology, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège, Belgium; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +32-4-366-22-72 Abstract: Slut shaming is defined as the stigmatization of an individual based on his or her ap- pearance, sexual availability, and actual or perceived sexual behavior. It can take place in physical or virtual spaces. The present study questions the impact of this form of sexism in virtual spaces on girls and interrogates the interaction between the values that girls integrate through their life experiences, especially in the family sphere, and slut shaming victimization. We conducted a paper- pencil questionnaire with 605 girls between the ages of 10 and 18 (average age: 15.18 years). Our data confirm the impact of slut shaming on the physical and psychological well-being of young girls as early as adolescence. Second, mediation analyses provide insights into the revictimization and Poly-victimization processes, from childhood adverse experiences to sexist victimization in virtual spaces and their combined impact on the physical and psychic health of girls. Finally, we address prevention strategies and the involvement of socializing institutions in the deconstruction of gender stereotypes. Citation: Goblet, M.; Glowacz, F. Slut Shaming in Adolescence: A Violence Keywords: slut shaming; violence; adolescence; gender stereotypes; sexual victimization against Girls and Its Impact on Their Health. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 6657. https:// doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126657 1. Introduction Academic Editors: Antonio Slut shaming is defined as the stigmatization of an individual based on of his or her Fuertes Martin, Andrés appearance, sexual availability, and actual or perceived sexual behavior and is primarily A. Fernández-Fuertes, Isabel aimed at women and girls. This stigmatization is reflected in social and relational sanctions, Vicario Molina and Paul such as rumors, ostracism, or insults, such as “slut” and “fag” [1]. As slut-shaming B. Tchounwou behaviors can take place on social networks or be exercised via instant messaging or SMS, the Internet and new technologies have made it possible to massively extend the scope of Received: 29 April 2021 this phenomenon [2]. Our study focuses on slut shaming taking place in virtual spaces Accepted: 17 June 2021 during adolescence. Published: 21 June 2021 Van Royen [3] found that 18.7% of young people had been called a “slut” on social networks in the six months preceding her study, which concerns 21% of girls aged under Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral 14 (476 girls aged 12 to 18). 10.4% of the participants reported that it had happened several with regard to jurisdictional claims in times. According to another study conducted among young Europeans aged 13 to 17 published maps and institutional affil- (n = 3257), 25% of the participants reported having been victims of sexual rumors in the six iations. months preceding the study. Eighty percent of participants reported having witnessed the use of sexist (“slut”) insults online while 68% had seen homophobic insults online [4]. However, these experiences are often trivialized by young people, and slut shaming appears to be a reality that is difficult to identify and name when it occurs, both in the Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. social and scientific spheres [5]. Is it even a form of violence? At present, studies have not Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. yet explored its impact on the adolescents who are the victims of it nor the experiences over This article is an open access article the course of their lives with adults who are important to them who can support them in distributed under the terms and coping with slut shaming or, on the contrary, make them more vulnerable in virtual spaces. conditions of the Creative Commons Our study aims to shed light on the previous experiences of victimization of adolescents, Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// especially in the family sphere, interactions with sexist victimization in virtual spaces, and creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ assesses the impact on physical and psychological well-being. 4.0/). Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 6657. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18126657 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 6657 2 of 15 1.1. Gender in Adolescence and Slut Shaming as Punishment In adolescence, puberty modifies the body and relationships with others. Through the changes that their bodies undergo, adolescents see their appearance evolving from childlike to sexual, thereby making them potential objects of desire in the eyes of others. The realization during the first loving and intimate relationships is an unavoidable result of this period of life and induces intense questioning around sexuality and intimacy [6]. This question occurs in the virtual space, too. A space that one might think is disembodied but in which young people—through the photos they post, their connected practices, or the pseudonyms they adopt—create a body in images that they want to be sexualized [7]. Indeed, new technologies offer young people new opportunities to achieve their developmental goals such as identity development and relationships with others, but these new technologies may also create issues around sexuality and intimacy. Sexting, the sending of suggestive messages or images, is one of the contemporary adolescent practices that illustrates this movement [8]. Through sexting, teenagers extend the boundaries of intimacy to the virtual space [9]. However, this practice is not without risk, and current studies testify to the unwanted dissemination, coercion, blackmail, and threats to access these images. Girls are even more likely to suffer the backfire of the production of such content [10]. The double standard sanctions sexting for girls, while it trivializes it for boys, and this sanction can take the form of slut shaming [11]. According to gender schema theory [12], young people learn from childhood to behave as girls or boys through the models they are exposed to. As they grow up, these messages become part of their self-concept and are reflected in their actions, thoughts, and attitudes. Digital technologies add a new dimension to this process, as they provide young people with new, often gender-stereotyped, models of identification and a virtual space in which to perform an “ideal” gender identity [13,14]. This gendered performance is a learning process based on trial and error and is subject to feedback from peers and people who are significant to the adolescent [15]. This feedback can result in social sanctions in the form of slut shaming. Slut shaming is frequently conceptualized as a form of (cyber)bullying. The conse- quences of cyberbullying on adolescent development and well-being have been docu- mented in the scientific literature: negative affects; depression and thoughts of suicide; academic difficulties and drop-out; relational issues; alcohol, tobacco, or substance abuse; and polyvictimization [16–19]. However, framing slut shaming as a form of cyberbullying risks making the gendered dimension of this form of discrimination invisible [17–20]. “Gender” can be learned [21], particularly through the eyes of peers and the positive or negative feedback they can provide on the gendered performances of young people. Gender is shaped by the social- ization contexts of young people, co-constructed by social interactions, and modulated by relational issues, notably with peers and parents [22,23]. This is also true for gendered standards and performances [24,25]. Slut shaming helps to consolidate and perpetuate gen- der norms and stereotypes and is a form of sexual oppression that is often trivialized [26]. By socially sanctioning behaviors or attitudes that deviate from the established norm for romantic, sexual, or gendered performance, slut shaming reaffirms the dominant codes of normative femininity [2,20,27]. As slut shaming helps to consolidate and perpetuate gender norms [26], we hypothesize that there is a link between gender stereotypes integrated by young people and slut shaming. In other words, slut shaming experiences could contribute to the structuring of certain representations of gender and gender relations, and these representations make young people more vulnerable and less willing to react to this form of gender-based violence. Self-presentation that is considered overly sexualized, a multiplicity of sexual partners, and sexual behaviors labelled as “deviant” with respect to the established norms or sexual orientation are likely to lead to slut shaming [7–28]. Therefore, this form of victimization is essentially gendered. Our first objective is to quantify slut shaming experiences among girl teenagers, starting from early adolescence, and to analyze how it fits into this specific Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 6657 3 of 15 developmental period. This developmental reading invites us to consider the role of the family sphere and the ways in which the childhood experiences of young people allow us to comprehend slut shaming. We pay particular attention to this phenomenon as a form of gendered violence as it relates to certain representations of femininity but also to how differs in this respect from cyberbullying. 1.2. Adolescents and Their Parents Adolescents
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